Gabriel
by Kourion
Summary: His hands are bare, and my eyes dart back and forth between them both, as if this is just another one of his grand master illusions. As if this doesn't mean something massive. Jisbon-focused. Death of OC./ ORPHANED - if you want to continue on with this, shoot me a message.
1. Chapter 1

**Title - Gabriel**

**Author - Kourion **

**Summary: **That look of pining, of yearning - I've seen it before. His gaze, always so saddened. But now, there's a different emotion muddled up in his eyes. A tenderness that makes me think that, despite everything, we might just be alright.

**A/N: **what prompts a one shot whilst I'm in the middle of a move, marathon training, and double-time work? The end music from the season 2 finale of _The Mentalist_, that's what. Blake Neely is a genius (imho), and his music never fails to elicit within me a feeling akin to... pain. Watching Jane, underneath the bloody smiley face, and _that music_? Stab me in the heart why don't you, Neely. Jeesh.

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><p><em>"At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self." - Brendan Francis<em>

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><p><strong><em>what was then/_**

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><p>The first time I felt it, Jane was eating chocolate almond biscotti, debating with Van Pelt in the SCU's kitchenette about how God was, of course, a figment of her imagination.<p>

Coming into the tail end of the conversation, I didn't catch much, but I heard Grace's slight rebuttal as I prepared a fresh pot of coffee and divvied up the remainder of my meager and thoughtlessly packed 'lunch' - sectioning off a portion of the peanut butter energy bar with a dull, plastic knife.

"_Pshaww_, Grace. Show me a person who actually _hears_ the voice of God, and I'll show you a schizophrenic. Possibly an epileptic during an auric phase. I'm open minded, after all."

The woman rolled her eyes, scraped last bit of remnant sugar up with her spoon.

"A lot of people talk to God, Jane. You're going to tell me that everyone who talks to God is crazy?"

Jane, I noticed (and not without a good dollop of amusement) had the slightest bit of melted chocolate on the corner of his mouth. It made him suddenly seem childlike - _moreso_, really - and I resisted the typical _do unto others_ impulse that would have informed him of this fact, smirking as I drank my coffee.

"But does he ever talk _back _to you, Grace? That's what I want to know. I mean, a sweet young woman like yourself? Why would God give you, of all people, the cold shoulder?"

"God doesn't have to present himself as a giant booming voice inside my head, Jane. I know God exists, because I've felt him. I feel him all around me, everyday. In everything."

Jane bit off a corner of biscotti then, and for a few seconds all I could hear were the crunching noises he made as he chewed up his treat.

"So God's in the skies and the rivers and the clouds...?," he mumbled, his mouth half full of cookie. "That's what you mean? God's in my biscotti biscuit? That's just _sense impression_, Gracie. Tasty sense impression," he finished, brushing his hands palm to palm to rid himself of errant crumbs.

"Come on, Jane. You never get the feeling that, oh_ I dunno_, there is something higher than yourself out there? Or, I mean, what about evil?"

Jane's small smile belied the spark of awareness in his eyes, even as he remained silent.

"Well, how can you reconcile the existence of evil without something...to_ offset_ evil?," Grace pressed, "Something equally powerful, but good?"

Jane's fingers did a little dance of irritation on the formica coffee table, his mouth still pursed into something warm, but his eyes rapidly hardening.

"So God is this...equally powerful_ good thing_, offsetting evil? Forgive me if I don't fall for this argument hook, line and sinker."

His eyes, rather than holding pain, remembrance, or anything of the past shone with an angered intensity instead. Not towards Van Pelt, no. The look triggered, I suspect, by the suggestion that there could be a God, and that God could be good.

And something else - some hard to categorize, hard to define emotion. _Pain_ would have been too ill-descriptive a word.

_I've felt pain._

A considerable amount of it in my life, with physical pain being the least of my concerns. A deep, sobering pain that made me wallow in the confines of my bedroom as a preteen. Stare at the band posters of Duran Duran that I had tacked up with my typical impulsivity, if the slantedness of the glossy faces staring back at me were any tell. I remember just gazing into the eyes of the paper men, and trying to determine **why** they were even _there_, crookedly, in my room. My whole space now...slanted. Off kilter.

Nonsensical.

Shock can do weird things to the mind, of course, and weird things it did; I recall picking up my worn rabbit doll (given to me by a maternal aunt, then estranged from the family).

Hoppity, his name was.

All worn, with the pilly, grungy look of a beloved stuffed animal that should have been chucked into the washing machine with a liberal addition of bleach a couple years back.

But in my shock, I can recall staring at Hoppity and not even _recognizing_ him. Not really recognizing my shelves, my books, my baseball trophies obtained during elementary school years playing little league.

And that's how everything felt on the day my mother died.

Strange. Disjointed.

_Unreal._

Things I'd known - people too - suddenly seemed unfamiliar.

Sort of like that game you play as a kid...where you take a random word, say - _mittens_ - and you repeat it 100 times in succession, as quickly as you can? Know that one? And by the end of it (if your mind is anything like mine, that is) you'll say the word and realize that it feels bizare on your tongue. That rather than seeming _more_ familiar, _more_ understandable, it suddenly sounds alien. An impossible word. One you don't really know at all. One you don't really _get_.

Or maybe, you'll find yourself brushing your hair - catching sight of your reflection in the long expanse of a vertical mirror, and suddenly, terrifyingly - you don't recognize your own appearance. Some distant little voice pips up, _'that's you'_ - or _'hello, there'_, but the normal, everyday YOU has taken a long hiatus, and the image staring back at you feels foreign.

That was the feeling I got for the briefest period of time when I caught Jane's expression - caught sight of his eyes, and the look within them - on that day. The day I caught the anger simmering away in those ofttimes cool, blue eyes.

_Anger towards God..._

_Anger, but something else, too..._

And it wasn't until my brother Gabbie's funeral years later, while he clasped my hands in the middle of the eulogy, that I recognized that look again - at first so hard to categorize, so hard to place...

And then, suddenly, solidly it clicked.

_Yearning. _

Patrick Jane was yearning for something. Something powerful. Something that made his eyes go distant, and his hands clench mine with a pressure that was almost too much to bear.

And while I thought, at the time, that he was trying to ground me, or keep me from crying, I think there may have been more to it, now.

He was yearning for connection. He was missing...God, his family? - I wasn't sure.

_Something he desperately ached to find._

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><p><strong><em>what is now/_**

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><p>Tommy doesn't live in Chicago anymore.<p>

But James, our eldest brother, still does. What's more - he seems more than happy to have Jane stay with the family. He has, after all, a _"perfectly sound guest room." _And I knew before I even arrived that I'd probably just end up bunking in one of the kids' rooms, anyway - happy for the distraction of a niece or nephew to keep me rooted in control - and not attacked by painful memories of my lost brother.

Which is fine. It really is. Maybe it won't be too bad, with Jane here. He had been uncharacteristically well behaved (_silent almost_) when meeting my younger brothers earlier when he had given each a resolute handshake - and his soft, nodded acknowledgement when they had made his aquaintance.

Actually, he has spent most of the funeral overseeing my youngest niece, Clara.

Clara is loudly inquisitive - her raven black ringlets bouncing about as she squeaks out questions. Questions like _when_ she can speak to Uncle Gabbie. '_Why is he in the box, Auntie Tree?' _Or if she can_ 'PLEASE give him the monkey painting?' _that she has made him (and had crumpled up in her jacket, folded messily). And Jane, God bless him, has managed to keep her high pitched questions from distracting the minister, thus far.

"But I made Uncle Gabbie a monkey picture! I want to give it to him! He _likes_ monkeys," Clara starts to complain again, growing restless. She has, after all, sat quietly through the earlier proceedings._ Relatively quietly for a three year old, anyway._

Finn, at six, is the opposite of his sister: unusually well behaved and composed, and he eyes her warily now. He's old enough to understand that his Uncle is, in fact, dead. So my brother alternates between trying to calm his youngest by gently _shushing_ her (_which never worked in our family. not with Lisbon females, at any rate_) and brokenly trying to explain that Uncle Gabriel couldn't really_ take_ her monkey picture, lovely though that sentiment was. That he was '_dead, Clare-bear'_, and dead meant '_forever.' _

Forever doesn't seem to be a concept that Clara really understands all that well: she'll nod quite sincerely only to squirm several moments later as Tommy - who is giving the eulogy - waveringly mentions something about Gabriel that Clara can fondly recall. And then her excitement to talk to him, _right now_!, starts all over again.

"But maybe he'll wanna come back if he sees it! Maybe he won't be so sad anymore, Daddy. I'm just gonna go give it to him!," she squeaks out impatiently, annoyed that she can't just amble on over to the coffin and knock on the lid - her stubborness all so classic _Lisbon-_ness, that I would laugh if the circumstances weren't so tragic.

"_Shush_, Clara. I won't be telling you again," my brother rasps, his voice hoarse from crying.

"_Ughhf!,"_ Clara starts to wail, fighting her father as he finally grabs her midsection (his patience tapped), and physically restrains her.

The flapping green velvet dress makes her stand out like an elf during a St. Paddy's Day procession, and not a wayward child during a funeral. Her little feet start to pound the grass, and that's when she starts to get **loud**.

"Lemme go! Daddy, let go! _Now_!," the little girl cries, her frustration and upset starting to become more pronounced as she issues orders to my brother. All 6 ft 2 inches of him, hovering over her barely 2 foot 9" frame. The sight is almost comical.

_Almost..._

"I _said_ that I wanna see Uncle Gabbie!," she howls then, her eyes suddenly filling up with tears - the underlying anxiety for Gabriel starting to become more evident as she tantrums. Because even a three year old, even if she doesn't understand what death means _fully..._ well, she understands _enough._

Understands that it is something that makes her daddy (who rarely cries) _cry_.

Understands that Uncle Gabbie _isn't coming back._

And that's when Jane crouches down low on his haunches and holds out his hands, waving her over.

Clara sniffs loudly, indelicately - _just as I would have done as a kid_ - all snotty boyish tones and red-faced frustration covering her fear. She totters over to him a second later - this man whom she had just met, this man whom she really doesn't know at all, who had just come along on this weepy day of rain and sadness and crying Uncles and Aunties.

Her face is streaked with tears by this point - her small features scrunched up, registering her grief - even if her words fail to indicate the same awareness.

"I wanna give Uncle Gabbie my picture. See?," she warbles, her little hands coming to clasp Jane's with such open trust that I almost shudder, suddenly remembering cases of abused children, their small bodies left in ditches, or discarded not unlike garbage. Little skulls with hairline fractures and 8 ball eyes, swollen in death with intercranial bleeding that never stopped.

_How anyone could hurt a little child..._

Sometimes it really sucks to be a cop.

"Uncle Gabbie likes my drawings _best_," Clara proclaims, her attention now fully focused on Jane. She looks as if she will stomp her foot in agitation if she doesn't get a favourable response on the artwork.

Jane smiles, bittersweetly. "I can see why, honey. This is a wonderful painting, Clara. Absolutely wonderful," and his voice barely surpasses a whisper as he struggles to keep the child composed. His eyes dash over the crumpled brown paper, with the tempera paint strokes, before he swiftly looks back up to the little girl, fondly.

"You're quite the artist, aren't you?"

Clara's expression and demeanor shifts abruptly then, and becomes so completely *me* that I know Jane _sees it._ The resemblance. That small build, the colouration, the impatient, tomboyish way Clara moves about in clothes she absolutely hates; itchy in her dress, fussing with the lace, craving her cords and t-shirts.

She sits on the grass, shrugging at the question, before she proceeds to take off her duck shoes - the waterproof boots that she always wears, bar none. Not even a funeral could prompt the child to wear dress shoes.

"Oh,_ for heaven's sake, James. That child!_," I hear James' wife, Natalie, start to hiss under her breath, before: "Clara Marie Lisbon - you leave those shoes on your _feet_!"

I hear the indignant tones of a wife who doesn't really see herself in her daughter, and never really _has_, and more than that...finds such mulishness embarassing. _**More**_ embarassing than a daughter who doesn't want to dress up in lace and ruffles and pink, apparently.

Jane acts - almost on impulse - to keep things cool; he hurriedly starts to retie the duck boots, even as the child starts to shake her feet to rid herself of them, her mouth quirking up into a near-grin as Jane struggles to put the boots back on her feet.

"Come on Clara," Jane tries again, his patience classically formidable with children, and no exception in this case. To me, he inquires, "I can take her over to the trees, for a little walk, Lisbon? Run off some of her energy? Would that be better?," his eyes darting nervously between myself, and Clara's mother.

I distantly realize he doesn't wish to provoke her ire, but probably for reasons other than the obvious. Knowing Jane, he has already figured it out: that Natalie is 'particular' with her children, and would rather have _none at all_ than misbehaved rugrats. Given that outlook, Jane's probably trying to keep my niece from being scolded.

"Yes, _yes_," Natalie supplies, overhearing his suggestion - seemingly relieved that _someone_ was willing to take the toddler, while Jane seems to waver until I give him the _'all clear'_ sign. My brother, too, seems content to let me decide - trusting my judgement more than his own, apparently.

I nod, my eyes hopefully broadcasting my genuine appreciation. Jane - _carefully, _I note - picks up my niece, one arm tucked easily under her knees, one hand bracing her back and ribcage, before he walks a small distance away and delicately drops her back to the ground. I see the child dart around a large angel tombstone, Jane semi-jogging after her a moment later.

"_Thank God_," I hear my sister-in-law mutter, while I restrain my inner protector, stilled perhaps by the tentative hand of my nephew as he reaches out for me.

_And sadly, I don't even consider myself a 'kid' person._

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><p>Some indeterminant amount of time passes and the eulogy comes to a close, the service ends, and people begin to disband.<p>

I wander off in the general direction where I've last seen Jane and Clara, and meander amongst the headstones and flowers and all too-green grass. A few feet off, near a lofty oak - I catch sight of them.

Clara is sprawled out on her tummy, her legs swinging in the air above her head. The pair are holding a discussion, so I watch quietly.

"Wanna know something? My friend Maizy has a dog named Patrick!"

_At some point, Jane must have supplied her with his first name._

"Good name for a dog, I think," he supplies a moment later, his voice warm and encouraging. I can imagine the smile Jane must be sporting given the warmth of his tone.

"Yeah," Clara quips. Her favourite word, in my estimate, is_ 'yeah'_ - a fact Jane was about to learn.

_Boy is he in for a treat..._

"_Yeah_, Patrick's a brown dog," she starts, "He's about, errrff," and again with the odd struggling _errrfh_ noises, a habit she also acquired somewhere, from someone, whenever she was trying to think of a word (or when throwing a tantrum, when no other word would suffice).

"He's about _maybe_ the size of my head, _yeah_."

In another lifetime, I would have snorted. Now, I sadly link Clara's odd way of describing things - random things - to Gabriel's way of describing the world.

_"That robin is as red as a candy apple, Eeyore! Come and see!"_ or _"That bug was smaller than a rice krispie!"_

"That's not very big, is it, though?," Jane queries, bringing me back out of myself, my mind.

"_Yeah,_" I hear the preschooler repeat. "Yeah, that big. Maybe even bigger now!"

A beat, and then: "'Yeah' - the puppy is not big, or yes, he_ is_ big?"

"He's big now, Patrick! As big as my head, I said!"

A moment goes by. _And I wouldn't blame him for a second_, but Jane is probably trying to think of some sort of logical reply to the child (who I already knew well in advance wasn't that logical at all.)

For starters, the puppy she has described _did_ belong to her friend Maizy, but wasn't named Patrick at all. He was, in fact, named Peter. And secondly, Peter is a great dane, now fully grown. But even as a pup he was about the size and weight of four Clara's.

"But you're not very big, are you?," Jane speaks tentatively, still confused, and still not knowing the actual dimensions of said puppy in question.

_Which is just as well, really._

"I'm very big. I'm almost this many!," even from the distance, I can see the little girl mock-count on her fingers her approximate age, holding out four fingers several moments later.

"Yeah! I just had a birthday!"

_Not quite. Her birthday had been five months ago. But who was counting, really?_

Certainly not Clara.

"You are four?"

"No, I'm...I'm _this_ many!," and again come out the four fingers. More impatiently, now. Almost irritated, if I had to hazard a guess.

"That's four, sweetheart," comes the ever patient reply.

"No!_ Uh uh!_ I'm three!," she catapults right back, seemingly annoyed that Jane could be so dense. "_Three_!"

Jane slowly pushes an index finger back down, whispering _'THAT's three. That's it. One less - there ya go,' _and then: "Oh. Well, that's not very old is it?"

"Yeah! I'm _very old_. I'm big too."

The child is just shy of 29 lbs. No one in their right mind would call her big.

"I see," Jane nods, face now forming into something serious and brisk. No-nonsense.

_Of course not._

The conversation really isn't going anywhere, and I almost feel a momentary sense of satisfaction. Now, finally, Jane would know how it felt to be on the receiving end of odd, winding statements that were hard to discern.

"So let me see if I've got this straight, Clara. You're a very aged three years old, and your friend - Maizy - has a puppy, that's brown, and the puppy is named Patrick? And Patrick is about as big as your head?"

Apparently Clara finds his summation hilarious, and starts giggling.

"You're silly, Trick!"

_Trick?_

She laughs again, and I see Jane smile slightly in response. He probably had no idea what was coming next, and was finding the exchange refreshing for that very reason alone. I can imagine life would get boring fast for a man who knows what almost everyone else is thinking five paces ahead of said person themselves.

"Yeah, he's cute. Like you!," she giggles again, before toddling over to Jane's side, sitting down besides him in the wet grass.

_The kid's apparently smitten..._

I fight down a groan, torn between rushing in and saving my consultant from any more of this odd child, and enjoying the show.

"Is that why you're a Patrick?," comes the small voice.

Confusion. All over Jane's face. I really wish I could capture the magic with a camera.

"'A Patrick', honey? What do you mean?"

"You're a cute Patrick too!"

"Umm, I-"

"Did your Daddy name you Patrick after a doggy?," Clara interrupts a moment later.

Jane's voice is strained with laughter by this point.

"No, I don't think so. I hope not."

"Did your mommy name you Patrick?"

"I think so. I think my mom gave me the name, yes. Most definitely."

"Yeah," Clara agrees, suddenly shifting the conversation into a new direction. "Pretty soon I'll be as big as my Auntie Tree! I'm almost as big as her now!"

_Oh no. Oh no no no. Not this. Not this again._

"Yes, you_ are_ almost as big," Jane chimes in, choking on the words as he nods his head in agreeance.

_Little twerp._

"Yeah. And Auntie Tree had a doggy too. His name was Roger!"

I know, without question, that I've never had a dog named Roger. Nor will I _ever_ have a dog named Roger.

"Oh - your Auntie Tree, huh?," Jane fishes, seemingly finding this a wonderful nugget of information. "Is that your Auntie _Teresa?_ _She_ had a puppy named 'Roger'?"

"Yeah!"

Jane sounds skeptical, having heard in past conversation -_ only briefly_ - about my my dog, Rupert.

**Now** he seems to get it: this little kid has a fierce imagination, and no qualms about adding her own made-up names and dates and times, if she thinks it makes the story richer.

If I didn't know better, I would have worried about some sort of issue with pathological lying. As it stood, I can recall Tommy going through his early years in much the same way, even though he had shirked his dishonest ways by first or second grade.

"No, nuh uh! Her name is _Tree_. Auntie TREE!," Clara loudly stresses the name as if Jane had simply not heard her well enough the first time.

"_Really?_ _Tree_, huh? Oh well, I thought it was Teresa - don't I feel silly!"

Clara giggles.

"I don't think she knows this, Clara. I think we should inform her of this fact right away. What do you think?"

"She came with you!," Clara points out, squinting, as if wondering how Jane could not, in fact, know my correct given name of _Tree_.

A moment later she scratches her cheek, apparently less concerned with that small technicality, and throws herself onto Jane's back instead. He seems to take this in stride.

"Yes. We came together. Me and your Auntie Tree," he replies a few moments later, his voice never wavering.

When Clara's firmly in place, she bats at his head with her hand imperiously.

"Stand up now, Trick!," she orders.

He does.

_Slowly. _

Holding onto her hands tightly as she shrieks in excitement.

"There's a birdy in that tree, Trick!"

"Mmm," Jane agrees, "there is."

"It's a baby birdy!"

Jane gazes upwards.

"I think maybe you're right, sweetheart."

Clara's face purses into a frown.

"Where's her mommy?"

Jane startles at the question, then studies the little animal - currently featherless and peeping out quite a storm of hysterical peeps.

"I'm not sure."

Clara's disturbed, so Jane starts to walk gingerly around the tree - looking for any other inhabitants in the foliage. Any _parental-seeming avian inhabitants_, it would seem.

"Is her mommy dead?"

The question comes out of left field, and he stops. Abruptly.

His face suddenly looks... strange.

"No, I'm sure her mommy is fine. She probably went off to get some food for her baby."

"But what if her mommy is _dead_?"

Jane's silent, rooted to the spot.

_Immobile._

"Will her daddy take care of her?," Clara tugs on his hair then - _actually tugs_ - suddenly upset with the lack of response. "Maybe we should take her home with us in case her daddy doesn't come back! I like birds!"

The wait is excruciating.

And then: "No, her daddy will come back for her, honey. Her daddy will come back. I'm sure her daddy loves her very much and won't let anything bad happen to her."

Jane starts to back away, though, his mouth clenched as if he's been forced into ingesting rotten fruit. He slowly lowers my niece to back down to the ground.

"Patrick?," she grabs ahold of his coat pocket, still caught up in the plight of the baby bird. "What if her mommy is _dead_ and her daddy doesn't come back? What if _she_ dies?"

It is only natural that the child would want to talk about death - especially since no one wanted to discuss what happened to Uncle Gabbie.

And maybe, in her little kid innocence - someone, even her new friend 'Trick' - would talk about death if she could relate death to a _baby bird_.

A whisper: "She won't die, Clara."

"Cause she's a baby, right? Because babies _can't die_, can they?"

Her voice holds a note of anxiety.

"You can't die when you're little, right? Right, Trick? You have to grow up first, right Trick?"

Jane swallows. The motion is staggeringly forced.

I notice that he won't meet her eyes.

.

.

.

I don't make a sound.

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><p><strong><em>fin or part 2? ideas?<em>** please review :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Title - Gabriel - Part 2**

**Author - Kourion **

**Summary: **His hands are bare, and my eyes dart back and forth between them both, as if this is just another one of his grand master illusions. As if this doesn't mean something massive. Jisbon-focused. Death of OC.

**A/N: **so fanfiction dot net apparently thinks it's hilarious to eat my author's notes. :/ In quick summation: my legs feel as if someone has poured concrete into the veins, and my heart has been beating triple time lately. I can only chalk it up to over training (but then again, I am not running excessively more than typical, and I did just get over a rather bothersome bout with the flu that could also be the culprit here. What a time to develop exhaustion! A week before a marathon! What freakin' bad luck! o.O). At any rate, when I have to cut my runs short because my legs feel lead-filled, I've decided I'll just type out a few hundred words instead, rather than running through pain...or brooding. It's better than not getting anything written for _weeks and weeks and weeks_...isn't it? :)

**And Game Time!:** given that I started typing out various future plot scenarios for our lovely Lisbon and Jane _ages ago (_well before the finale, anyway, and I didn't feel like just scrapping all my previous groundwork... I guess you could say that just about everything I write is a little non-canon-esque. (_That would be an understatement. I really could not envision Jane's finale actions having come... quite so soon_).

At any rate, even though everything in my fics will probably depart from the shows canon development, at least around the time of said finale, I did try to include at least one unspoilerish _shout out_ to the episode 3x24 (Strawberries and Cream) within this section. See if you can spot it? (I'm sure you all can).

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><p><em>"When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours? <em>_And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? __" - _Franz Kafka

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><p><strong><em>all we have is now/_**

The drive back to James' house is uncharacteristically quiet. I drive. Jane sits, almost frozen - not even bothering to fiddle about with the rental car's AM/ FM controls. I half heartedly pay attention to the procession of cars ahead of us, my attention more than equally divided on driving, and watching Jane.

"So umm," I start, hesitantly. Jane looks almost lost in thought, and has for awhile, so he gives the briefest ripple of awakening as I speak, "thanks for helping with Clara, and everything. She can be a bit of a handful."

Jane smiles.

It's a sad smile.

"She's a sweet kid," he muses. "Inquisitive."

"For sure. I mean...her intentions are always good. But she can be a little bit stubborn sometimes, maybe."

I am, without question, walking directly into a line of fire here, but I'll do it this once.

If only to see his smile lose its tint of sadness.

"Stubborn? _Clara?_ Isn't that an exceptionally hilarious case of the pot calling the kettle black, Lisbon?"

For one who didn't know Jane well, they might misinterpret his words as being some sort of cutting retort, or pick up on a less-than-kind borderline sarcasm. They might take it as a snarky signal, and be quiet, pensive - from here on out. Refuse to comment any further, and simply leave him alone.

But I can hear the tones - his incredulity laced with a _terribly distant_ hue of something less prickly. Some tonal quality that dances alongside amusement and, possibly, _endearment._

_Almost as if he **likes** my stubbornness..._

"Well, maybe so. But still, all the same... thank you. I mean, it helped a lot. James isn't really...the disciplinarian sort. And their _mom_..."

Jane nods, silently, "...doesn't like energetic children?"

His mouth is drawn into something belying frustration, without being particularly angry. I can only imagine the latent pain that would claw to the surface whenever he sees a child that seems to generate irritation or be taken for granted by a parent.

"She loves her children, Jane. It's just...," I pause for an amber light, bring the car to a complete stop, and stare out the window - a window now being rapidly pelted with raindrops.

For one delirious moment, I feel something akin to claustrophobia clutch at my brain. It fizzes, curdles, and then reverses direction until I'm assailed by an equally agoraphobic sense of everything being too overcast, too **present**.

_Smothering._

_As if I'm _choking_ on air..._

As if I need darkness, and solitude, and no more _feelings: _no more of this warm blooded gravelly reality that is all too sharp and true. Not so much because it's painful, because** it is**, but because it's **_everywhere_** and it's been pulsing for days now, and I imagine it's the fear that this horrible clenching pain will _never actually go away _that is making me dizzy and nervous.

At first, when I learned that Gabbie had committed suicide, the pain had presented itself as more of a glass-shard-shock and discombobulated weepiness. A pain that was splintered. Half of me, possibly less, crying in some basic understanding - though a very vital part of me (_though I'd be loathe to admit it to anyone, ever, and certainly to Jane_) had retreated to the back of my brain, and was watching everything as if from the sky.

_A watcher, not a sister..._

At least, for the first few moments, anyway - while I read the letter once over, and then again, and then **again** - _"I'm so sorry to have to tell you this Tessie, but Gabriel passed away..." _in the confines of my work office. Uncomprehending.

**_"I'm so sorry..."_**

**_"so sorry"_**

**_"sorry"_**

Jane, at the time, had been in the kitchenette.

I don't think I screamed, or cried. But suddenly there he was, holding back the sounds and sights and the concerned gazing looks of the others: of their touches and worried expressions. Cho read the letter within my grasp - quickly scanned its contents, quickly understood the root of my undoing.

And Jane, too, somehow understanding in that moment - _in the moment of a moment_. He had known in some intuitive way, unless something else had been vocalized amongst the group during that deafening space of seconds when my pulse had spiked, and my blood had blotted out the external world in a torrential downpour of its own.

A time when all I could hear was blood moving through the pressurized canals of my brain.

My bodily plumbing systems.

_shrsssh shrsssssh shrsssssshhh_

_maybe something is leaking?_

No noise of the streets, or the office - just a _wooosh, wooosh, wooosh_ while everything in my life, in my line of sight, switched positions. Suddenly, the sun fell to the earth and the moon rose up to take its place.

The world seemed black on white, white on black - no colour, nothing as _jubilant_ as that. Only star-filled hollowness - the profundity of death and the polarity of unreality, somehow all too heavy and all too light.

_Nonsensical._

So Jane had taken my arm and had extricated the letter, firmly, brooking no argument - while I clenched up and tried to hold on. Linking Gabbie with the letter, linking that rotten filthy piece of parchment with my little brother and his last moments on earth. My last awareness of everything being my established-normal. But that was before the moon came up red and the sky filled with dark light.

That was before everything - God, too, maybe - laughed at me.

_youweretoolate. toolate. toolate. **toolate.**_

_The little brother I had almost hand-raised. The little one I had always taken special pains to protect, knowing his sensitive nature, knowing his intensity, his blue-black take on life, and needless suffering. _

_Even as a child._

And then, after a time, a time that may have been a minute or an hour, it's hard to say, especially in retrospect - something_ else_ kicked in. That type of _ohmygodwhycan'tIbreathe?_ intensity that hits you so perniciously, that your breath is taken away without request. No one asks you; it's stolen, completely - almost without understanding, and certainly without warning.

Stolen like the Lindbergh baby on a liquorice-black night._/Stop thieves! Bring him back! He's mine. Can't you feel that you're no good for him? That I love him more than you? Bring him back, death! _

Jane had looked so full of comprehension, it was almost staggering. His eyes, his knowing eyes - watching me. Then drawing down the blinds, leading me to the couch. Holding me.

_"You don't need to deal with anyone else right now, Lisbon. Nothing else."_

__I feel cool fingertips reach over my face, rest against my temples, come to my eyes, encouraging me to close my eyes completely.__

But when a little brother ties his own death rope, creates his own gallows...who is the _thief?_ Who can you blame? Certainly not the poor, hapless brother. Wound, meet salt. So...your father, long dead? God?

Knowledge - an aching understanding: this is how Jane feels. Then, and now.

_And I didn't even see Gabbie's injuries, his body. _

Yet I still feel rueful, torn, horror-struck-angered in a way that defies typical definition. But also weak. Anemic, my insides plucked out.

_As if I've been running around on the top of a jungle gym, have fallen, and have gotten the wind knocked out of me with such force that I can't imagine that I will, indeed, breathe again. _

But then you do, and you feel like crying not so much because you've fallen, but because _you_ haven't been broken beyond repair.

_Your brother has, but not you. __You have no right to cry...not for yourself. _

Even though you feel like a hare, in the forest, outrunning the fox. Your racing, thumping heart hasn't slowed down in two days, and you're starting to wonder if this is your new normal. You're starting to wonder if you'll just feel like this forever: nothing more than a pitiful little creature - full of a pain so carnivorous that your belly feels concave with the acidity of it all.

Of course, when the pain of that first tumbling fall subsides, the hurt that remains and strengthens within you is of a burning, hissing kind. Not unlike the pain I felt tripping down a camp trail on my cousins over sized Rollerblades as a lanky 9 year old; ripping open my thin tan trousers, and shredding my knees to crimson swirled skinpaper bits. Leaving flaps of anemic flesh to hang over a vital intensity of _red, red, red_.

Red muscle and blood and **_everything red_** - save for the superficial exterior, which had been pale, and more so once eroded. Before I removed that grazed covering of skin with shaking fingers, tearing off little red and blistered black-red sections, almost transfixed. And I couldn't decide how I could feel the pain and feel the numbness, all at once. Not as gasping a pain as the initial shock of losing breath by tripping off the jungle gym had been. _No._

The long slide down the rocks had been duller. Warmer in its infliction, more encasing in its sting. And I had limped home, my legs coated in blood, the pain had been a constant throbbing reminder that _you were stupid. you were going too quickly, not looking around, not paying attention. if you had slowed down, this would have never happened. it couldn't have. if you had been smart, and cautious, and paying attention..._he'dstill fucking **be** **HERE**.

"Lisbon?," Jane tests, gently nudging my wrist with his hand.

Jane.

_And that day, in the office, with blood too forceful for the small confines of my skull... _

_He comes back to my side. His voice is more a breath of warmth in this all-too cold office. More breath than voice. "Oh Lisbon..." _

_He makes me lie down. _

_"I'm going to help you. I'm going to help take away some of the pain."_

_Was that really only two days ago?_

_How could that only be two days ago?_

_If feels like a lifetime has passed since then._

"Lisbon? The light is green."

I swallow, nod. Duel with my emotions. Ignore irrationally heightened anger when a driver behind us beeps, impatiently. After all, they have no idea we've just come from a funeral.

Ironically, a week ago, I may have done the exact same thing.

I could have been that impatient person behind the wheel, ticked exorbitantly by the slowness of others, blissfully unaware of their devastation.

* * *

><p>My brother has a well composed home. He has obviously hired landscapers: a gentle slope of flowers cascades in rivulets of fuchsia pink and eggplant purple around the premises, and landscapers are the obvious choice as Natalie would never get her hands dirty, and James certainly never inherited Gabbie's love of gardening. In fact, as pathetic as it sounds, James would very likely kill a cactus, though that's something of a morbid accomplishment in and of itself.<p>

I'm much the same way, but I credit the history of my prematurely croaking plants to an erratic work schedule and a job-focused mind. Dogs may be safer, because at least they'll communicate with you. But plants just sit there, beautiful but still - even as they're dying from dehydration or starved for sunlight. It's easy to forget about the quiet and the beautiful. Especially when, for so long, they look the same, seem the same.

_'You'd make a horrible mother. You know that right?'_

At any rate, some sort of vined plant climbs over trellises, and evergreens dot the perimeter of the walk. I notice that Finn's green bike lays toppled against the gate, and is semi-crushing the plants, so I move it to a more appropriate location knowing his mother will blow a gasket if it damages the greenery.

"Looks like everyone is here already," Jane murmurs, and it's true.

The lot is full of cars and I immediately catch sight of the gold SUV (James') and a smaller, hybrid Toyota, cobalt blue (which belongs to Tommy). As we walk across the cobblestone, I allow myself a quick peek and catch sight of a car seat and infant toys clustered in the back.

I share a small smile with Jane.

"You'll get to meet the baby, in all his tie-dyed glory."

Jane gives me a look.

"The baby?"

"Tommy's son, River. Alyssa will probably be here, too - Tommy's wife. You'll love her. _Genuinely_," I add, grinning - possibly for the first time in days, only momentarily cheered up by the image invoked when I think of the couple, so unarguably different to James and Natalie that I almost can't wait to make the introductions.

"_Tie-dye_?," Jane questions, smiling back. "Wait...the _baby_ wears tie-dye?"

His smile is subdued, but at least it's not so sad.

"Alyssa is...well...she's quite the character. Any earth or animal cause? She's at the protest, has the t-shirt, and - _I didn't tell you this_ - maybe even has the rap sheet for it, too. Save the seals, save the polar pears, save the _pygmy elephants of Borneo!_," I laugh, "Gabriel and her got on well, as you could imagine."

He gets it.

I know he _gets it_, and when he reaches for my hand a moment later he gives it a reassuring squeeze.

"Well, lead on," he bows his head, but not before picking up a raggedy monkey doll. "Awww. Some one has lost their pal."

"It's Clara's. She has about twenty different monkey dolls. Finn has even more, if you can believe it. All different species: macaques, spider monkeys, capuchins, _howlers_...," I trail off.

Jane turns the 8 inch plush around in his hands, not seemingly off put by its apparent grunginess, and waits for me to continue.

"Gabriel always used to just show up with that big grin of his...and gift bags from the Brookfield zoo. And that would have them jetting to the door, because they both knew he'd always have another couple stuffed animals for them both, and stories. _Always with the stories_, and always different kinds of animals, too - but when they were monkeys he'd go into depth about what made each species so special, and how intelligent they are, or how monkeys make tools, or show self-awareness, or how they have their own language...and their own _grammatical_ structure, or some such thing. Always on about how we're not the only intelligent species on the planet. How we're always looking for aliens, for God... for some other intelligent being - so we don't feel alone, when what we really need is right here, right in front of us if we'd just stop..."

My throat suddenly closes up, and my eyes fill with tears. And though the sensation feels warm and full - almost calming, in that drug-induced way - it also feels_ unnecessary_ because at this moment in time I don't even feel all that sad.

Not this second. Not _right now_. And tears should really only come to a person when they feel terribly sad - not when they feel numb, and certainly not when they feel wistful. Not when they're reminiscing about the good times, the best times.

_Not when they're coping._

Jane hands me the doll, while I brush my hands over the frayed cotton. The little thing is well loved: pilly and thread bare.

"This one should have been washed at least a year ago, in a basin of bleach. _Oh my_, Natalie is going to have an absolute_ fit_ when she sees it..."

His fingers toy with mine - skirting around my knuckles, dancing lightly, before they entwine completely.

"This one is wearing a pink dress, Lisbon. That's a _Princess_ monkey, if I do say so," he asserts, "so she's special. She's the most special of all."

I ignore the rush of something full and fluttery in my belly. It's not the first time I've had that rush of adrenaline course through my system, prompted by Jane's touch, and it's not likely to be the last time, either. But today of all days...it doesn't seem right. To be feeling _this_. **This**. Again.

Try telling that to my body, however. This death, this pain - you'd think it would make me want to shirk off all personal ties, all personal connections - in my classic attempt to need_ no-one, need nothing_.

But, if anything, it's making these feelings I have for Jane - and my connection with him - all the stronger. It's strengthening these feelings of something... more.

_Something more?_

Something that scares me. Something that is incredibly laden with meaning, intensity and a burgeoning sense of the inescapable.

* * *

><p>My lightest rapping might as well be an <em>'open sesame'<em>, as the large oak door widely opens almost a second later.

James greets me warmly, his eyes - pink rimmed and puffy - stand out in vibrant contrast to his Irish-pale skin, and are a dead give away of his deeper emotions.

"Hey Tessie," he starts softly, clears his throat, and turns to Jane.

Jane - whose hands are currently covered up by a charcoal pinstriped suit, fists now huddled. Concealed.

The stance is one that is not at all unfamiliar. It heralds back to our early years together, when he'd amble around, half lost in thought - bundled up in his ridiculously expensive garments, seemingly untouched by the whipping desert air. He'd walk around, study a scene from various angles as we'd traverse long, winding back roads, or interview witnesses, or stand over a crime scene itself. And sometimes he'd mumble the odd, if insightful comment to himself... not unlike a crazy person...his hands firmly cloistered in pinstripe.

Of course, then, I barely saw the act for what it was: a cover for his modest apprehension with the new position, the new circumstances, and possibly (_dare I say, now... hopefully?_) the new people in his life.

Now, I see the shuffling about and his hidden-hands persona as The Patrick Jane equivalent of a toddler hiding behind a mother's skirt on the first day of preschool. Peeking out behind checkered cambric print, glancing around and maybe, with small smile suffusing an equally small face...venturing out to join the class.

What's more, some faint voice that I will almost glibly title _women's intuition_ whispers to me: _he hasn't made the connection, he doesn't know you know._

That he doesn't know that I have, indeed, started to connect those smallest, faintest punctuations of his astronomy. And that awareness - that I can sense an insecurity within him, that he has actually been unsuccessful in hiding - makes me feel even more protective.

Those chinks in his armor make me feel more assured of his reality as a torn man, one who has been savagely beaten down by the past. Not the flippant, impish 'rebukes-roll-off-my-back like water rolls off a duck's' personality he had so intricately crafted for his own protection.

No...it's in these little glimpses of his internal anxiety that I feel even more tender, even more...

"You must be Mr. Jane," my brother begins, rousing me from my thoughts - and Jane stumbles about, gives a curt nod before his eyes quickly train back to a place on the welcome mat.

James prompts a handshake next, and there we have it: Jane reaches out in response, and with fluid movements full of compassion - returns the handshake. Which would be 100% fine, save for the fact that...that...

...

...

/

_No ring._

_No ring._

His hands are bare.

His hands are bare, and my eyes dart back and forth between them both, as if this is just another one of his grand master illusions.

As if this doesn't mean something massive.

_**Why isn't he wearing his ring?**_

If James eyes this oddity, he doesn't comment - and merely returns the shake firmly.

"You...don't, well, _Jane_, please," Jane stumbles out, the sounds uncharacteristically awkward in this throat. I catch his slight fluttering look, sideways and edgy, and I sense the enormity of what's just occurred.

_Jane isn't wearing his ring._

_I've noticed that Jane isn't wearing his ring._

_I've correctly concluded the underlying motivation prompting this change._

_Jane has noticed my new found awareness._

_Jane doesn't know how to handle my new found awareness._

"Or Patrick. I don't really pull off 'mister' too well," Jane jokes almost shyly, and I witness just how strange_ timidity_ looks on this man. Just how wrong the vestment of hesitancy straddles his body; foreign, and almost jolting in its surreality. What's more... if his hand shuffling, pocket-stashing tells of nervousness don't give him away, his quippy half smile (_no teeth exposed, lip almost bitten_) certainly tells me all _I_ need to know.

That Patrick Jane, for whatever crazy reason, is actually somewhat **nervous.**

Nervous about meeting my brothers.

And either the nervousness is something he can't completely hide, or it's something he isn't _bothering_ to hide, and both scenarios are ones that I would have previously rejected as being ludicrous.

Jane..._nervous_?

"Well, what do you prefer?," James tests, always careful to get off on the best possible foot with just about everyone, and doubly so in the case of my colleagues, work associates and - most especially - my friends.

"Uhh, I don't really...," Jane begins as we both step into the warm entryway, which currently smells of raisin-spice cookies and cranberries. He opens his mouth slightly to finish his reply when his next words are mutinously silenced by the trundling little-train-of-Clara as she bulldozes her way into our space.

"Hi Trick! You came to eat scallots with us, yeah?," Clara gushes, apple cheeked and rambling. For a kid on an organics-only, no-sugar diet, she's a little on the hyperactive side at the best of times.

_'Scallot?'_, I mouth to James, amused.

"Scallots" being, again, most likely some spur-of-the-moment improvised word of my niece. Additionally, a _scallot_ could also be just about any number of edibles: a shallot, a scallop, scalloped potatoes, or something approximated with far less accuracy.

And none of those scenarios would surprise me in the slightest.

_'Trick?,_' my brother returns to me _be_mused while I wave away his question with a roll of my eyes, a shrug of my shoulders.

"I made the cheesy scallots all by myself, Trick! No help from _anyone_, an' I used the whirler thing and I used the orange and the white cheese and the grater machine with the holes and the heater! All by myself. No one helped. I made it by myself! You like cheesy scallots, yeah?"

She looks so proud of herself that it takes all my internal strength not to bite down so hard on my tongue as to draw blood.

_All by herself, my ass. _

Clara's not even allowed to touch the microwave without adult supervision due to her recent experiments involving a piggy bank, all the various and sundry contents hidden within, and her amusement after hitting the defrost button repeatedly while watching the rather intense light show of sparks and flames.

"Wow, Clara," Jane smiles down at the child, suddenly much more relaxed - even in the presence of this child with obvious problems discerning fantasy from reality, "you made these_ 'cheese scallots'_ all by yourself, huh? That's pretty awesome!"

"Yeah! An' I used the orange cheese and the white cheese. I used more of the white cheese cause that's the better one, right? That's mozzy cheese, not ched cheese. Do you like the white one better, Trick? I used the whole thing, so then I had to use the orange one cause it's better when it has more cheese, right? Which one do you-"

"Hey Clare-bear, let's let Mr. - umm, let's let Patrick get his bearings before we start asking him all these questions. Okay pumpkin?"

For a brief second there is a moment of calm - and then Finn decides to shuffle in besides as well. More tidily than his sister perhaps - _since he doesn't actually collide with Jane at top speed, prompting an almost pained oomfp! from the man..._ though that's hardly an achievement given his temperament and general reservation.

"Hi Finn," Jane adds a moment later in greeting. "How's it going, buddy?"

Finn gives us a polite wave in response - now looking less doleful than his earlier self. His current uniform has changed from the hitherto black dress pants and turtleneck, to a much more child-friendly outfit comprised of corduroy pants, neon socks, and a crimson cable knit sweater. Sporting his over sized reading glasses, I'm suddenly struck with the idea that my nephew could probably pull off a rather convincing version of a younger Harry Potter next Halloween. All he'd need is a painted on lightening bolt scar and some tape around those glasses, and we'd almost be set.

"Can I take your coat, _Pa_-Trick?," Finn enunciates clearly, eyeballing the youngest of the entryway occupants, and sticking out his tongue at Clara in added _so there!_ fashion. I try not to laugh at the interplay, while James mock groans at the devolving scene and slowly hollows out the entire space by pushing against his stocking-clad children. The youngsters skid along for a moment or two on the waxed flooring, before Finn stumbles a bit over the excess fabric of one pesky sock, and falls. When he glances up at his father a moment later it's in irritation.

Jane bends down to help the little boy back up again, but the damage is too late, and his pride is wounded.

"I'm okay. But Daddy hurt my knee being rude," he starts as he rubs his leg, and then louder - his admonishment now directly aimed at the paternal figure alone: "I was just asking for his coat, Dad! Mommy said to be polite and ask for his coat!," Finn huffs, frustrated with his sister, his father, his whole failed offer.

In a basic sort of solidarity - _eldest child to eldest child_ - I suddenly feel a little badly for the kid. It's not easy being the eldest: always being expected to lead the best example of behaviour, to be the most mature, the most disciplined, the most helpful - whilst smaller and annoyingly _cutesier_ siblings lap up an unfair share of attention by family and strangers alike.

And though I can tell Jane was more than ready to even the score, and reach out to the little boy - Finn's own nature is one of perfectionism. My nephew would now likely stew up in his room until he was called for dinner, at which time he'd likely _still_ be angry with his father.

Lisbon-tempers _do_ tend to run a little on the hot side, and only seem to peter out when redirected by some more pressing condition. Ones such as bafflement, or incredulity.

Which, in this house, typically is the role bolstered up most of all by Clara.

As case in point, she barrels on, undeterred in her attempts to speak to Jane.

"Do you like my t-shirt Trick? It has...seahorses on it, see?," she enthuses, pointing to each blue cartoon seahorse as if the mentalist would need her visual aids to see the animals in question. "An' these here are my sparkle pants, see? They have all my favourite colours in 'em, and mommy said I couldn't wear 'em but I want to wear them cause they're my favourite, and so I think I'll just wear them anyway an'..."

James pick up his youngest, wipes at his eyes - his exhaustion heavily apparent.

"Come on Clare-bear. If mommy said she didn't want you to wear these then we'll have to find something more appropriate..."

And 'appropriate' really is the right word for it, too: the sparkle 'pants' are really scarcely more than sparkle pantyhose, sheer at that - and I don't even bother to constrain the bubbling effusion of laughter as I hear her angered, _'no, no, NO Daddy, these are my best pants!' _stream down the hallway.

Jane turns to me, grins. "Is that what you were like as a child, _Tree_?"

"Oh, Tree? Seriously? You're actually going to go there? Oh, alright...well then I guess we're calling you Trick, huh?," and I pause momentarily, "although Trick does seem to make some sort of basic sense, doesn't it? I mean, maybe Clara's onto something here..."

"Ha ha, so _funny," _his eyes are warm, and he comes to stand closer besides me. The motion is fraught with a tension that has been climbing in increments for far too long now, and the air feels heavy with the weight of it all, as if primed for a thunderstorm. I swallow down that odd, swirling adrenaline.

Because this is ridiculous. This jitteriness.

"Just think of it, Lisbon...if we ever get a craving for candy, and are say... mutually stranded in the Chicago-land area during All Hallow's eve, we can just borrow the tykes and, well, you know... have a night of _trick_ or _tree_? How perfect is that? Trick or Tree?"

His smile does little to diffuse the gibbous jolted thrum of my heart.

_Ridiculous, Teresa. You're being absolutely ridiculous._

"That is beyond cornball, Jane!," I sputter, and when I decide I can finally talk again. "That's..."

"Cheesier than cheese scallots?"

His smile, however possible, expands.

_review? imagine a large-doe-eyed-anime-deer pleading with ya, okay? ;)_


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